Extreme weather shook outdoor live music this summer. What happens next?

It was a moment Bright Eyes had worked towards for more than a year. Over 10,000 noughties indie-folk fans turned out to watch the Omaha group, led by Conor Oberst, perform their revered twin albums ‘I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’ and ‘Digital Ash In A Digital Urn’ at a specially staged, 21st anniversary show at New York’s Forest Hill Stadium. They got through half of it… and then the storm arrived.

Promoters called the band off stage, pulled the concert, and told fans to get to safety before conditions worsened. For Oberst, it was painful deja vu. A concert weeks before, at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Colorado, had already been nixed due to an unseasonably heavy snowstorm.

“We’re still reeling,” Oberst wrote after being forced off stage in New York in June. “We worked really hard for many months getting these 3 shows together, and 2 were affected by severe weather. We’re feeling extremely defeated, sad, unlucky, maybe even cursed. We lost money on the whole endeavor and, worst of all, didn’t get to complete what we set out to do.”

Yet, Bright Eyes have been far from the only ones in this type of position. When it comes to disruption from extreme weather to outdoor live music, 2026 has been unrelenting. Once extraordinary scenes have become worryingly familiar.

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In July, a widespread heat dome event in the US preceded a severe period of wildfires – the toxic smoke from which cancelled shows by The Black Keys and Mavis Staples. Dangerous air quality also kept metal-pop artist Poppy off stage at Upheaval Festival in Michigan, saying she was “unable to breathe” – her band played the set wearing respirator masks. It was a similar story in central Europe, and the UK during a summer defined by persistently scorching temperatures. It was the hottest ever, according to the UK Met Office.

Festivals and outdoor shows deployed emergency heat action plans, which included increasing shade and cutting the cost of water. In one instance, the performance times at Harry Styles’ Wembley Stadium show were revised.

For some events, the heat was catastrophic. In June, the 70,000-capacity electronic festival Defqon. 1 was cancelled and evacuated after Dutch authorities enacted a code-red extreme heat alert. The same weekend, major events like Paradise City in Belgium and Garorock in France cancelled parts of the programme due to the blistering temperatures. In parts of England, months without rainfall meant face scarves became must-have festival accessories as green parks became dusty wastelands. Glastonbury, had it taken place in 2026, would have baked in temperatures of 38ºC.

The storms came, too. A violent hailstorm forced a Bad Bunny show in Italy to be abandoned, while Swedish House Mafia had to pull a homecoming stadium gig in Gothenburg. In June, New York’s Governors Ball was hit by a hail thunderstorm and 60mph+ winds that cut short the festival and cancelled performances from Kali Uchis and Amyl And The Sniffers. After a torrid weather year in 2025, Tennessee’s legendary Bonnaroo Festival was interrupted again by extreme storms – organisers say the event won’t run in 2027.

One of Europe’s best-known festivals, Primavera Sound Barcelona, also suffered on the first day, forcing the cancellation of headline performances from Massive Attack, Doja Cat and Mac DeMarco.

“The venue of the festival suffered a few hours of persistent rain and strong gusts of wind, marked as a yellow warning by the weather authorities,” recalls Aleix Ibars, Head of Communications at the festival. “As a team, the festival is a very intense period of time with plenty of work and stress, but also moments of fun and happiness. So when these kinds of situations happen, it takes a toll on us on many levels.”

“Temperatures which once would have been considered rare are occurring more often, and extreme heat events are becoming more intense” – meteorologist Ric Robins

Picking up the pieces from an extreme weather event is a messy business – literally and financially. Above everything, it’s about the safety of everyone there. But then, fans need refunds. Artists, crew, staff and security need paycheques. Ordinarily, event insurance kicks in to cover the costs.

One insurance specialist speaking to NME said: “It’s highly disruptive to an event’s cash flow. The festivals I work with are adapting, particularly to heat – for example by being ready to create more protective shade for fans or ensuring they don’t run out of water when thousands of people need to stay hydrated.”

Holger Schmidt is General Secretary at European Festivals Association (YOUROPE). “Looking ahead, this will certainly mean additional specialist services, technical adaptations and further infrastructure-related precautions for many events. However, these requirements are not emerging out of nowhere,” says Schmidt.

“It would also not be surprising to see insurance companies, as well as festival organisers, seeking adjustments to contractual conditions. After a summer like this, it is more the rule than the exception that stakeholders react and adapt accordingly.”

Schmidt is right. 2026 wasn’t just a one-off bad summer, and it shouldn’t have taken anyone by surprise. Climate change – primarily driven by humans burning fossil fuels – is heating the planet. Each 0.1ºC increase ratchets up the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. For example, more heat leads to wildfires; more precipitation means more flooding.

“While individual hot summers and extreme weather events have always occurred naturally, the background climate is now warmer than it was in previous decades,” Ric Robins, a senior meteorologist from the UK Met Office, tells NME. “That means temperatures which once would have been considered rare are occurring more often, and extreme heat events are becoming more intense.”

It’s something that festivals like Primavera Sound say they’re keenly aware of. “Preparation is the only way to go here,” explains Ibars. “Unfortunately, nothing can prepare you for certain situations, which is where the experience of doing a festival for 25 years comes in.”

• READ MORE: Act 1.5: Inside Massive Attack’s Bristol blueprint for the future of sustainable live music

It’s important to note that climate change is not responsible every time there’s severe weather. There was bad weather before. However, the instances where it is a contributing factor are ramping up – quickly. A recent attribution study, released by the UK Met Office, confirmed the UK’s succession of 2026 heatwaves was made a staggering 130 times more likely by climate change.

There are many in music trying to address this trend by reducing its contribution to the big picture. There are well-known examples of Coldplay implementing low-carbon technologies on tour, and Billie Eilish taking action at her shows. In the past few months, Lorde powered a major festival headline show in Bristol using clean-energy batteries and Boomtown’s main stage ran off green hydrogen.

At the wider scale, major artists including The Cure’s Robert Smith and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke recently called on the UK government to halt a plan for fossil fuel extraction at a site in the North Sea. Influential artists like Robyn are attending climate marches, and newcomers like former NME Cover star Chloe Slater are putting the crisis at the front and centre of their work.

So, what next? The encouraging news is, the work to address this is happening – in the music community, and beyond. For example, more than half of the UK’s energy now comes from clean renewable sources – like wind and solar. Yet, collaborative action on a global scale isn’t yet happening deeply or quickly enough to slow planetary heating.

In a sobering thought, that means the climatic conditions currently being experienced by me, you, your friends, family and fellow music fans – are the least extreme any of us will experience. “This doesn’t mean every summer will be hotter or that every festival will experience disruption,” confirms Robins. “Weather remains naturally variable. However, the evidence shows that weather extremes are becoming more likely.”

And so, live music and festivals are in for a long and bumpy ride. But like Bright Eyes – who will come back together with thousands of fans to complete their shows in January 2027 – giving up simply is not an option.